Sunday, March 02, 2008
The Camel’s Back
Since the start of the week, you have slept no more than five hours each day. You felt dehydrated and with the impending arrival of autumn in the wet weather, you felt you are coming down with the flu.
At a certain stage, you flew in and out of state in a day after back to back meetings (with no time to pee or eat), plus a delayed flight back due to storm and with no chauffer arranged to come pick you back home in the late of the night, given that the secretary has no idea when exactly you might touch down, you were basically fucked.
In those next few days, you came to learn that hired cabs are unreliable in Sydney. No matter how early you have awaken just to make sure no one fucks up your schedule and inevitably your career just so that your mind of steel could outdo the fatigue of your body, things would still fuck up. Somehow your stipulated cab driver will either keep you chasing after him in the rain because he was blind to you in the wee hours of the morning and it didn’t help that you happened to be dressed in your black suit or he did not know his way to THE tower of power you work and his electronic navigator cum street directory could do little to assist him in fathoming your address so much that he had to disrupt your power naps so that you could do his job or he simply bailed out on you while you waited for a good half hour and you have little choice but to run to the train station and instead rely on the good old trusted public transport. You learnt that the most reliable mode of transport is to get a hired chauffer like the ones you get to sit in when your bosses are around because these people understand that their livelihoods only stand at the expense of waiting on other people’s time and making sure everything runs smoothly; there is no room for mistakes by missing the beat by even one second.
This is also a week where you realised you always get to do everyone’s job for them. Your servitude and patience of God has been tested at a new profound level.
Working away at your desk for fifteen hours straight again with little food and toilet breaks is something you have always taken pride in being able to handle. You realised that you are quite able to do the work of your bosses and multiply that by six times in efficiency of what they could usually achieve in producing in one day of the similar job. You do the grunt work but you also do the write up that as a junior burger of your team, your work contract would have stated that the level of that job was meant to for the revenue generators, not the executor. And you must realise your place as an executor. Never mind, you keep telling yourself-that is the fun part of the job- writing about people. After all, isn’t that what you do in your private time?
But you get the shits when things were deemed wrong-grammatically and what have you. People forget that you are doing their work and you haven’t any support to double-check the work that they have so carelessly promised the client within an impossible turnaround time as you churned the assessments away. They forget that like them, you have also got only 24 hours a day and no matter how much sleep you have sacrificed to make the mission impossible work and tried your darnest to make them look so good whilst they slept in peace, you could only achieve this much.
Came crunch time to deliver as the client called for the finished goods to be delivered whilst you continue working tirelessly away, suddenly the honcho started getting the panic attack. The honcho hurried and watched over you as you typed, telling you how cross she was and how slow you were typing whilst she then rounded the rest of the frightened team (who was actually getting ready to leave for the day) to stay back and proof read your work. She spat sarcastically that it was filled with errors and some bits were “rubbish”. You had ten arrows flying in your direction, the honcho telling you she really wanted to get home now and you better send it off whilst the proof readers simultaneously shot questions over in attempts at making better sense of your work since they were not there at the meetings. You tried to take some deep-ish breaths whilst you type away and talked sense to each and everyone, with the honcho hounding you like she herself represented a pack of wolves and demanded that you stay glued to your seat whilst she tried to manage your screw ups. You did not allow yourself to crumble or cry under the pump. You simply would not let anyone detect your weakness- you kept a straight face and took the blows as it came. You hardened up but you did not feel any ounce of sorriness. The only sorriness you felt was a sense of disappointment perhaps with yourself thinking how you could have better managed yourself and prevented this situation.
When everything had gone under control or so it seemed, interested parties started to enter and take over at a very good time where all they needed to do was to take out the red pen and made some window dressing amendments to your work when you have already done the necessary damage control with the client directly. In fact, the “rubbish” that you have earlier written suddenly seemed to be worthy of presenting to the client. Never mind, you told yourself, at least it was done and you and the team made the deliverables and the client expressed satisfaction with the work.
You heaved a sign of relief. You truly believe in team spirit and sharing the credit for the finished product since the honcho has always been a preacher of joint collaboration amongst team members. You were ready to unwind for the evening with colleagues in other teams post the fire fighting.
The national Big Boss of the office (a man of ambassadorial presence and a prominent Chairman of a certain elite sports club) was present at the office social gathering that evening. He came over to speak to you. You have always held the man in the highest regard for his charms and gravitasque as a leader. You began to have a friendly chat with him over wine and then you asked him cheerfully why was it that he never looked stressed. Some small conversation there and he started telling you that he has been noticing for a long while because it is his job to observe all how his staff are being treated by their respective bosses and colleagues. He said that you have been too giving- you need to learn to say no sometimes to people and what has been demanded of you. He assured that he has said this not only in the capacity as a colleague but also in confidence as a friend because your instincts to always to protect your own pack. Your peers sitting around nodded away furiously. Your peers whom you have external friendships with have asked you for the longest while how the fuck you could handle the shits from your team when they often overheard what has been expected of you to produce or do. Whilst your peers each support just the one originator, you have been supporting a significant multiply to one. They asked you how the fuck you do it, especially when your team can speak to you in such a manner at times. You always smiled and say well, there is so much to learn from the expertise of each individual and that you could still handle it. You said the same to the national Big Boss that you have always asked yourself the question of whether you could handle it. Yes, thanks for his concern and advice and you will bear in mind but right now, you are quite happy with the way things are. You always maintain that level of prudence at work because you truly believe in team collaboration and to stick by the rules that you never bite the hand that feeds you despite the shortcomings of each of these people, which you are fully cognisant of. You hate to be caught in any potential conflict of interest and just want to get the job done and move on. There is still much good value in the experience you get out of the corporate world to prepare you for your own gig to come in years- you continue to grit your teeth.
The secretaries got flowers of appreciation by the honcho on a Friday morning for the “long hours” and stress they have gone through to support the team. You smiled and felt somewhat relieved. So whilst you thought that the last day of the week seemed to be winding down pretty well and the previous days have been saved with satisfied clients and a very appeased honcho, you thought the week couldn’t have ended any better. In the least expected of moments, the honcho, your colleague (the window dresser of your words) had to plan the next course of attack on the assignment. You suddenly found yourself being side stepped and openly insulted by the honcho that your colleague should really be sending his interview notes (and no P, you do not need to travel inter-state anymore to conduct the second rounds of interviews) to the secretaries to type up because “P can only type with two fingers” and “P, please don’t get us into this situation again…”
You felt so stumped and had a good mind to ask what situation? Because you must know that if P hasn’t written up and went along with her decision to write up thoroughly on each of the individual’s assessment to bring colour to them each but instead followed the honcho’s advice to write a few points, the client probably would not have been able to plan their strategy too well given that the work would have been slip shot and P was better off writing just one fucking big assessment to represent the “views of everyone”. Surprisingly (which the honcho should find out within these few days since she probably hasn’t read the completed client version), the other colleague (senior enough to make the call) has used P’s “rubbish” work and all the assessment will suggest that the content that she had earlier stressed over are still one and the same of P’s earlier work albeit being prettied up a little in some of the word arrangements. It is so convenient you know, to edit other people’s work and pretend that it is your own… your face began to turn red hot and you swallowed your saliva and held your breath for a bit…
You left the honcho’s room and got back to your desk. Business as usual, you told yourself. You have other assignments to get on and no time to grieve or moan. Somehow, as you continue typing away at your PC, you feel the hot tears swelling up your eyes. You took a deep breath but to no avail. You have little choice but to get up from your desk before you got too ridiculous looking…
You quickly made your way into the bathroom cubicle. You sat on the toilet seat and tried to hold back your tears but you could do little to contain that dam of tears. They just burst and you found yourself sobbing uncontrollably. All you could think of was, “how unfair, how unfair…” Thoughts flashing across your head- all the hard work and momentum you have gathered to work your way up the corporate ladder finally getting some traction but once again now quashed, the sacrifices you made along the way to make it work, even the relationship with DL that you gave up because you knew you have never been a multi-tasker to begin with and realised that you wanted a career more than you have the courage to juggle with two things… and look where that led you to, you asked yourself? You haven’t broke down like this since the day you let DL go after he left your place because you simply cannot allow yourself to crumble no matter how much pain you feel…you tell yourself you should allow no time to dwell and grieve on anything in your life because you have to be strong for yourself to prepare you for the bigger things in life that will come if you continue to focus on it...
But a screw up- you have been deemed. You did other people’s work, bore the brunt when things are not looking great, finally delivered satisfactory work with happy clients but people only remembered those “mistakes” you made and never failed to remind you that you screwed it up for them- never mind how ridiculous the deadlines they have promised were but the fact was you delayed the unrealistic timeline they have set and in that, you have since been condemned a failure. No one backed you up even when they were aware of the injustice committed on you(and silently am glad each of them were not on the firing line) - once again, you are made to fend for your defence- less self. Either way, you could only lose in a situation like such.
Heck the sore back, neck and eyes from the long, crazy hours of deep concentration at work. The camel has always been real hardy and quite enjoys a good challenge. But injustice- how could one justify one that has been committed on you that will continue to mar her good reputation? What’s your limit?
This incident has thus broken the camel’s back. You have already questioned yourself critically if it was your Ego playing silly buggers with you yet again to attribute to your embarrassingly wimpy break down episode that amounted to a wallow in self-pity session. But this time you know better.
****
The bonus cheque was delivered. You noticed that you have been taxed more than 40% on the amount that you hadn't been too excited about.
Anyhow, you just blew more than one grand on retail therapy to prepare yourself for homecoming where you got to pretty up on those occasions where you do your social rounds. Still, the outlay has done nothing to appease that internal injury committed to you at work this time round. You continue to keep the scores close to your heart.
****
So yes, you are convicted to plan your next course of action. You will seriously take up the national Big Boss’s advice and bring it up to him on Friday night drinks and form an alliance comes the following week where another social event will give rise to some opportunity for aligning with the right people. You have never felt so determined with this notion. But now at all costs, you will devise a plan to find your way back home. You have enough of doing the right thing by everyone and inevitably letting yourself down one too a many time, setting your own plans back. Now you will take care of you- no more excuses for anyone and for yourself. All it really took was one final straw of injustice to cut you deep enough at where it matters.
All that deep seated anger has culminated to this point and with this one incident who has thus fuelled you to the extent of no return, you are so ready to launch. And yes, with a vengeance.
Since the start of the week, you have slept no more than five hours each day. You felt dehydrated and with the impending arrival of autumn in the wet weather, you felt you are coming down with the flu.
At a certain stage, you flew in and out of state in a day after back to back meetings (with no time to pee or eat), plus a delayed flight back due to storm and with no chauffer arranged to come pick you back home in the late of the night, given that the secretary has no idea when exactly you might touch down, you were basically fucked.
In those next few days, you came to learn that hired cabs are unreliable in Sydney. No matter how early you have awaken just to make sure no one fucks up your schedule and inevitably your career just so that your mind of steel could outdo the fatigue of your body, things would still fuck up. Somehow your stipulated cab driver will either keep you chasing after him in the rain because he was blind to you in the wee hours of the morning and it didn’t help that you happened to be dressed in your black suit or he did not know his way to THE tower of power you work and his electronic navigator cum street directory could do little to assist him in fathoming your address so much that he had to disrupt your power naps so that you could do his job or he simply bailed out on you while you waited for a good half hour and you have little choice but to run to the train station and instead rely on the good old trusted public transport. You learnt that the most reliable mode of transport is to get a hired chauffer like the ones you get to sit in when your bosses are around because these people understand that their livelihoods only stand at the expense of waiting on other people’s time and making sure everything runs smoothly; there is no room for mistakes by missing the beat by even one second.
This is also a week where you realised you always get to do everyone’s job for them. Your servitude and patience of God has been tested at a new profound level.
Working away at your desk for fifteen hours straight again with little food and toilet breaks is something you have always taken pride in being able to handle. You realised that you are quite able to do the work of your bosses and multiply that by six times in efficiency of what they could usually achieve in producing in one day of the similar job. You do the grunt work but you also do the write up that as a junior burger of your team, your work contract would have stated that the level of that job was meant to for the revenue generators, not the executor. And you must realise your place as an executor. Never mind, you keep telling yourself-that is the fun part of the job- writing about people. After all, isn’t that what you do in your private time?
But you get the shits when things were deemed wrong-grammatically and what have you. People forget that you are doing their work and you haven’t any support to double-check the work that they have so carelessly promised the client within an impossible turnaround time as you churned the assessments away. They forget that like them, you have also got only 24 hours a day and no matter how much sleep you have sacrificed to make the mission impossible work and tried your darnest to make them look so good whilst they slept in peace, you could only achieve this much.
Came crunch time to deliver as the client called for the finished goods to be delivered whilst you continue working tirelessly away, suddenly the honcho started getting the panic attack. The honcho hurried and watched over you as you typed, telling you how cross she was and how slow you were typing whilst she then rounded the rest of the frightened team (who was actually getting ready to leave for the day) to stay back and proof read your work. She spat sarcastically that it was filled with errors and some bits were “rubbish”. You had ten arrows flying in your direction, the honcho telling you she really wanted to get home now and you better send it off whilst the proof readers simultaneously shot questions over in attempts at making better sense of your work since they were not there at the meetings. You tried to take some deep-ish breaths whilst you type away and talked sense to each and everyone, with the honcho hounding you like she herself represented a pack of wolves and demanded that you stay glued to your seat whilst she tried to manage your screw ups. You did not allow yourself to crumble or cry under the pump. You simply would not let anyone detect your weakness- you kept a straight face and took the blows as it came. You hardened up but you did not feel any ounce of sorriness. The only sorriness you felt was a sense of disappointment perhaps with yourself thinking how you could have better managed yourself and prevented this situation.
When everything had gone under control or so it seemed, interested parties started to enter and take over at a very good time where all they needed to do was to take out the red pen and made some window dressing amendments to your work when you have already done the necessary damage control with the client directly. In fact, the “rubbish” that you have earlier written suddenly seemed to be worthy of presenting to the client. Never mind, you told yourself, at least it was done and you and the team made the deliverables and the client expressed satisfaction with the work.
You heaved a sign of relief. You truly believe in team spirit and sharing the credit for the finished product since the honcho has always been a preacher of joint collaboration amongst team members. You were ready to unwind for the evening with colleagues in other teams post the fire fighting.
The national Big Boss of the office (a man of ambassadorial presence and a prominent Chairman of a certain elite sports club) was present at the office social gathering that evening. He came over to speak to you. You have always held the man in the highest regard for his charms and gravitasque as a leader. You began to have a friendly chat with him over wine and then you asked him cheerfully why was it that he never looked stressed. Some small conversation there and he started telling you that he has been noticing for a long while because it is his job to observe all how his staff are being treated by their respective bosses and colleagues. He said that you have been too giving- you need to learn to say no sometimes to people and what has been demanded of you. He assured that he has said this not only in the capacity as a colleague but also in confidence as a friend because your instincts to always to protect your own pack. Your peers sitting around nodded away furiously. Your peers whom you have external friendships with have asked you for the longest while how the fuck you could handle the shits from your team when they often overheard what has been expected of you to produce or do. Whilst your peers each support just the one originator, you have been supporting a significant multiply to one. They asked you how the fuck you do it, especially when your team can speak to you in such a manner at times. You always smiled and say well, there is so much to learn from the expertise of each individual and that you could still handle it. You said the same to the national Big Boss that you have always asked yourself the question of whether you could handle it. Yes, thanks for his concern and advice and you will bear in mind but right now, you are quite happy with the way things are. You always maintain that level of prudence at work because you truly believe in team collaboration and to stick by the rules that you never bite the hand that feeds you despite the shortcomings of each of these people, which you are fully cognisant of. You hate to be caught in any potential conflict of interest and just want to get the job done and move on. There is still much good value in the experience you get out of the corporate world to prepare you for your own gig to come in years- you continue to grit your teeth.
The secretaries got flowers of appreciation by the honcho on a Friday morning for the “long hours” and stress they have gone through to support the team. You smiled and felt somewhat relieved. So whilst you thought that the last day of the week seemed to be winding down pretty well and the previous days have been saved with satisfied clients and a very appeased honcho, you thought the week couldn’t have ended any better. In the least expected of moments, the honcho, your colleague (the window dresser of your words) had to plan the next course of attack on the assignment. You suddenly found yourself being side stepped and openly insulted by the honcho that your colleague should really be sending his interview notes (and no P, you do not need to travel inter-state anymore to conduct the second rounds of interviews) to the secretaries to type up because “P can only type with two fingers” and “P, please don’t get us into this situation again…”
You felt so stumped and had a good mind to ask what situation? Because you must know that if P hasn’t written up and went along with her decision to write up thoroughly on each of the individual’s assessment to bring colour to them each but instead followed the honcho’s advice to write a few points, the client probably would not have been able to plan their strategy too well given that the work would have been slip shot and P was better off writing just one fucking big assessment to represent the “views of everyone”. Surprisingly (which the honcho should find out within these few days since she probably hasn’t read the completed client version), the other colleague (senior enough to make the call) has used P’s “rubbish” work and all the assessment will suggest that the content that she had earlier stressed over are still one and the same of P’s earlier work albeit being prettied up a little in some of the word arrangements. It is so convenient you know, to edit other people’s work and pretend that it is your own… your face began to turn red hot and you swallowed your saliva and held your breath for a bit…
You left the honcho’s room and got back to your desk. Business as usual, you told yourself. You have other assignments to get on and no time to grieve or moan. Somehow, as you continue typing away at your PC, you feel the hot tears swelling up your eyes. You took a deep breath but to no avail. You have little choice but to get up from your desk before you got too ridiculous looking…
You quickly made your way into the bathroom cubicle. You sat on the toilet seat and tried to hold back your tears but you could do little to contain that dam of tears. They just burst and you found yourself sobbing uncontrollably. All you could think of was, “how unfair, how unfair…” Thoughts flashing across your head- all the hard work and momentum you have gathered to work your way up the corporate ladder finally getting some traction but once again now quashed, the sacrifices you made along the way to make it work, even the relationship with DL that you gave up because you knew you have never been a multi-tasker to begin with and realised that you wanted a career more than you have the courage to juggle with two things… and look where that led you to, you asked yourself? You haven’t broke down like this since the day you let DL go after he left your place because you simply cannot allow yourself to crumble no matter how much pain you feel…you tell yourself you should allow no time to dwell and grieve on anything in your life because you have to be strong for yourself to prepare you for the bigger things in life that will come if you continue to focus on it...
But a screw up- you have been deemed. You did other people’s work, bore the brunt when things are not looking great, finally delivered satisfactory work with happy clients but people only remembered those “mistakes” you made and never failed to remind you that you screwed it up for them- never mind how ridiculous the deadlines they have promised were but the fact was you delayed the unrealistic timeline they have set and in that, you have since been condemned a failure. No one backed you up even when they were aware of the injustice committed on you(and silently am glad each of them were not on the firing line) - once again, you are made to fend for your defence- less self. Either way, you could only lose in a situation like such.
Heck the sore back, neck and eyes from the long, crazy hours of deep concentration at work. The camel has always been real hardy and quite enjoys a good challenge. But injustice- how could one justify one that has been committed on you that will continue to mar her good reputation? What’s your limit?
This incident has thus broken the camel’s back. You have already questioned yourself critically if it was your Ego playing silly buggers with you yet again to attribute to your embarrassingly wimpy break down episode that amounted to a wallow in self-pity session. But this time you know better.
****
The bonus cheque was delivered. You noticed that you have been taxed more than 40% on the amount that you hadn't been too excited about.
Anyhow, you just blew more than one grand on retail therapy to prepare yourself for homecoming where you got to pretty up on those occasions where you do your social rounds. Still, the outlay has done nothing to appease that internal injury committed to you at work this time round. You continue to keep the scores close to your heart.
****
So yes, you are convicted to plan your next course of action. You will seriously take up the national Big Boss’s advice and bring it up to him on Friday night drinks and form an alliance comes the following week where another social event will give rise to some opportunity for aligning with the right people. You have never felt so determined with this notion. But now at all costs, you will devise a plan to find your way back home. You have enough of doing the right thing by everyone and inevitably letting yourself down one too a many time, setting your own plans back. Now you will take care of you- no more excuses for anyone and for yourself. All it really took was one final straw of injustice to cut you deep enough at where it matters.
All that deep seated anger has culminated to this point and with this one incident who has thus fuelled you to the extent of no return, you are so ready to launch. And yes, with a vengeance.
